Blog Post
Evolve or Fade: What a 150-Year-Old Institution Can Learn from the Startup Playbook
Evolve or Fade: What a 150-Year-Old Institution Can Learn from the Startup Playbook
The greatest risk facing legacy institutions isn't irrelevance—it's believing their history guarantees their future.
For most of my career, I've founded, led, or advised startups. I spent years helping organizations go from idea to impact: building products, shaping brands, and testing assumptions in real time. What I've always loved about startups is their relentless focus on solving meaningful problems. They succeed not because they have a long history, but because they listen closely to their customers, learn quickly, and adapt continuously.
When I became CEO of The COOP in 2024, I assumed leading a nearly 150-year-old institution would be fundamentally different. After all, the brand was already established. Surely the hardest work had been done.
I quickly discovered the opposite.
For The COOP to thrive for the next 150 years, we need many of the same capabilities that drive successful startups: customer obsession, rapid experimentation, and a willingness to challenge long-held assumptions.
Over the last year and a half, we've been running the COOP like a startup. Not what you would expect from an institution that’s been around for more than a century. We’ve tested new ways to engage our community - from a puppy study break and creating the first student design competition for window displays, to hosting an unforgettable day of live music and festivities and installing a 9-foot-tall AI-powered storytelling display created by Harvard alumni. These aren’t isolated initiatives. They’re part of a deliberate strategy rooted in a simple belief: legacy brands don’t remain relevant because of their history. They remain relevant because they’re willing to reinterpret their purpose for a changing world. Throughout history, we have seen businesses fail because they were wedded to their original ideals and didn’t listen to the changing needs of the market.
This is the first in a series of articles I’ll write about what we’re building at The COOP as well as our thinking behind it.
A Tale of Two Companies
In the late 1990s, both Polaroid and Apple faced the same challenge: rapid technological change was reshaping how people created, consumed, and shared content.
Polaroid had built an iconic brand around instant photography. Ironically, the company was an early pioneer in digital imaging technology, yet it remained committed to the film business that had driven its success for decades. As consumer behavior shifted, Polaroid struggled to adapt and ultimately filed for bankruptcy.
Apple took a different approach.
Rather than defining itself by the products it sold, Apple defined itself by the purpose it served. Steve Jobs described Apple's mission as creating "tools for the mind that advance humankind." That broader view gave the company permission to evolve beyond computers and into entirely new categories—from digital music and smartphones to apps and services.
The difference wasn't technology. Both companies recognized the shift.
The difference was mindset.
Polaroid protected its products. Apple reimagined its purpose.
That's the question every legacy institution must answer: Are you defined by what you've historically sold, or by the enduring value you create for the people you serve?
Why Established Brands Lose Their Way
The data on corporate longevity is sobering. The average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has fallen from 67 years in the mid-20th century to roughly 15 years today.
In retail, the trend is accelerating: more than 7,000 brick-and-mortar stores closed in 2024 alone, with projections for 2025 even higher. Retailers that once seemed too big to fail have either closed or are shells of their former selves. Take Blockbuster and Toys R Us. Blockbuster failed not because people stopped wanting to watch movies, but because people preferred streaming movies over renting physical copies. When Toys”R”Us launched, the company gave kids a wondrous experience of walking into a place devoted to play and discovery. Then e-commerce came along, they underinvested in both the in-store and online experience, and Toys”R”Us was displaced by the likes of Amazon and Walmart.
In thinking about retailers that avoided this fate, The LEGO company is a useful case study. In the early 2000s, LEGO was struggling. To recover, they first centered around their mission. LEGO wasn’t a company that sold bricks. It was a platform for unleashing creativity. This insight led to LEGO movies, video games, theme parks, stores and more. They took their heritage, and translated it into something that could grow and succeed.
When I joined The COOP as CEO, the business was healthy. But healthy today doesn’t guarantee relevance tomorrow. I very much had all of these retailers in mind when deciding how best to evolve.
What the Startup World Gets Right
Spending years working with early-stage founders gave me a useful lens for this problem. In a startup, there is no luxury of relying on what worked before. There is no “before.” You have to continuously reflect on the purpose you’re serving, and whether you’re serving it in the best possible way. You have to be willing to experiment and iterate in public, with your customers watching.
Legacy brands need that same commitment to continuous experimentation and iteration. It sounds simple in writing, but it is counter to every instinct leaders of a successful company develop. After you’ve built something and have a large customer base, your gut is to minimize risk and keep doing things that work. The result is making safer and safer choices that gradually make you less and less relevant.
Thinking about the LEGO example I mentioned earlier, the word “translate” is the one I keep coming back to. You don’t throw away everything that worked in the past, nor do you want to freeze and hope the world stays still. You analyze what is timeless about your company’s mission, look at how the world around you is evolving, and anticipate how you must adapt. You honor the past without being bound by it.
What This Means for The COOP
For The COOP, translating our legacy means a few things concretely:
1. Lead with experience, not transaction. If someone’s only reason to visit us is to buy something, we’ve already lost to Amazon. We have to think of our physical spaces instead as platforms for ideas, community, and connection.
2. Start with purpose, not product. Much like Apple, the question we’re focused on answering isn’t what we should sell, but what role we should play in people’s lives.
3. Design for the next generation without alienating the last. The goal isn’t to replace our audience - it’s to expand it. We’re designing for the Harvard and MIT communities of today and tomorrow while honoring the generations who came before. As our community’s needs evolve, we must evolve alongside them.
4. Honor the past without being bound by it. Heritage should inform our direction, not define it. We want to preserve what makes The COOP special while giving ourselves permission to become something new.
5. Build in public. Not everything we try will work—and that's the point. Innovation requires experimentation. We'll test new ideas, listen closely to feedback, and adapt quickly based on what we learn.
The hardest challenge for any legacy institution is deciding what to preserve and what to reinvent.
I've come to believe that organizations endure not because they protect what they’ve always done, but because they continuously reinterpret why they exist.
At the COOP, the work is already underway.
In my next piece, I’ll share what we’ve learned from designing our new Allston Concept Store as a retail and community space for the next generation.